


All I Need Is A Fast Machine

by Chaibelle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Implied Relationships, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:08:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaibelle/pseuds/Chaibelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything runs in cycles, endlessly repeating itself. The past becomes the future. A young man has just lost his mother. Scenes from Ben's life as a hunter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I Need Is A Fast Machine

In the months following his brutal introduction to the hidden world of the supernatural he learned that his story wasn't that unusual. He'd come home from college to find his mother choking on her own blood on the kitchen floor, and a lanky man wrestling with a fanged woman in the living room. He put a chair leg through the fanged woman's chest, and followed the hunter to the vampire nest as soon as he'd seen to the funeral arrangements. 

The lanky man had said that he would make a good hunter. A few weeks later he hit the road in his mom's beaten up hybrid, leaving his old name behind to protect his aunt and cousins. At the first motel he came up with a new name on the spot, recalling a well worn set of books he'd had as a teen.

"Your name?"

"Ben Winchester."

\--

Ben quickly discovers that he has a talent for sniffing out troublesome ghosts, and that his once-favorite book series is more then a little accurate.

He's putting an end to a particularly vengeful spirit in California when he runs into a pair of hunters. They start when he introduces himself.

"You're not related to The Winchesters, are you?" One of them asks, looking slightly terrified.

"No," Ben said, feeling confused. He begins to wonder if those books were really fiction.

\--

The hybrid meets a messy end in Northern Minnesota. Ben can't remember which of his mom's boyfriends taught him how to be a card shark, but he spends a couple days putting together a few hundred that he uses to buy a turn of the century Firebird. 

The radio doesn't work quite right, but it readily picks up the signal from his mp3 player and that suits Ben just fine. He tries to keep to an honest living, staying just inside the law.

Except when a job requires that he dig up a grave.

He wanders aimlessly from state to state, watching the numbers on the odometer crawl higher and higher. He doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, but for the moment hunting feels right. At least he is helping people - saving lives.

Deep inside dissatisfaction burns, and a nameless sorrow rages. Mile by mile he strives to stay ahead of it.

\--

A pair of Vetala in North Dakota nearly do him in. He barely finishes them off and hobbles back to his car. He bandages himself up in the backseat, and think about quitting for the first time since he started on his cross country ghost hunt of self discovery. He thinks about the teeth, and the flames, and the bloody bodies. 

He has yet to not save someone, but he'd come close in that warehouse. He thought about stopping while he was ahead, and he thought about going home and convincing his aunt that everything was alright. 

He looked to the sky, and the sparkling stars. "I need a sign," he muttered, the closest thing to a prayer to cross his lips since he was a child.

\--

'Singer Auto Salvage' proclaimed the faded sign over the gate. It was a haven for hunters, or so Krissy Chambers had told him at the truck stop up the road. How she pegged him as a hunter Ben wasn't sure. But she had pretty eyes, and he had her number in his back pocket. 

He pulls in and up to a house that was newer then the property around it. Getting out of his car he wanders around the outside of the house, wondering if anybody was home.

As he came around to the back of the house he stops in his tracks. There, parked by the back door, is a beauty of '67 black Chevy Impala. Ben catches his breath, memories washing over him of strong hands pointing out different parts of an engine of a car very like the one before him. A patient, prideful voice guiding him through the steps of keeping the classic car on the road.

One of his mom's boyfriends must have had a car just like that one, though he couldn't put a name or face to the beautiful car in his memories. That one must not have been around very long.

"Hey," a gruff voice called out. Ben turned to see a tall middle aged man limping towards him from the entrance of the salvage yard. 

"This is a beautiful car," Ben told him, gesturing to the Impala. The man glances at the car and smiles fondly.

"It is," he said, then he snapped his gaze back to Ben and his expression hardened. "It's not for sale."

"I couldn't afford a car like that anyway," Ben admitted with a shrug. He held out his hand. "I'm Ben Winchester."

The man gave him a strange, searching look as he took his hand for a firm hand shake. "Dean Singer."

\--

Dean Singer wasn't quite as old as he'd first guessed, but life had been hard on him. Besides the obvious limp, he had the fading scars of acid burns across his face, and scars criscrossed his forearms. He held himself like all his joints ached, his dark hair was starting to turn grey at the temples, and his blue eyes were haunted by old pain. But Ben had the impression of wiry strength backed up by experiance, and knew that this man was still dangerous in a fight. 

"You're new to the business," Dean stated, breaking the silence.

"My mother was killed by a vampire over a year ago. I just... sort of fell into it."

Dean grunted. His blue gaze was piercing, and Ben felt like he'd seen straight through him. He was tempted to ask him if he knew why he was out risking his life hunting monsters in the dark. 

\--

"What's your real name?"

Ben jumps at the sudden question. Dean isn't looking at him - instead he seems intent on some point in the distant past. "What do you mean?"

"Only a fool of a hunter would use the name 'Winchester.'" Dean grumbled. "Pick a different name, or better yet - give up the life. Get out now, while you still can."

\--

Two months down the road, and Ben is back at Singer Auto Salvage. He is heading back north, and the Firebird has started to make strange noises at odd intervals. Dean grunts at him as he fumbles through explaining the problem, and polishes off his can of beer before he climbs into the car to drive it around to the garage. By the end of the day half of the car's engine is spread around work space like disemboweled guts. 

Dean didn't talk much while he worked. After the first hour Ben gave up trying to start a conversation. He sits on the nearby work bench and keeps them both supplied with beer. 

It makes Ben feel like a kid again. He sighed, thinking of how his mom would have liked Dean. Road-hardened leather and classic rock - he was exactly her type. 

\--

He met Krissy again in a diner in Washington. They shared stories over a late night breakfast. He learns that she is the daughter of a hunter, but she only hunts on the side. Her main job is as a trucker.

When their meal had waned to cups of coffee he finally asked the question that had been nagging at him for awhile. "Who are the Winchesters?"

She turns thoughtful, tucking a lose strand of hair behind her ear. "They are legends," she said. "They were brothers - a pair of hunters that managed to make quite a name for themselves in the 2000s. They made a lot of enemies, and some say they went up against Lucifer himself to stop the apocalypse."

She pauses when the waitress comes off to refill their coffees. Then continues while she empties packets of cream and sugar into her cup. "I'll admit most of what I learned is hearsay. Though I did meet them once - they saved my dad. I was a bit of a snot to them, though I still think they deserved it. That was just before Roman Enterprises collapsed. Rumor is they had something to do with that too."

"Wow," is all Ben can say. The Winchesters sounded less like hunters and more like mythical figures. "What happened to them?"

Krissy shrugged, and sipped her coffee. "Nobody really knows. Some say they are dead, some say they retired. But I've heard that there is still a hefty price on their heads."

\--

"Why did you stop hunting?" It seemed like an innocent enough question at first. After two years Ben was beginning to understand that few hunters made it to old age. Fewer still retired. 

Dean limps to the kitchen and pours himself a glass of whiskey before he answered. "I got tired of saving the world," he said, staring into the rich brown alcohol. Draining the glass he poured himself another, and another.

Tonight was going to be a bad night.

\--

Ben takes on his first real demon in Wisconsin. Demons are rare nowadays, and he stumbles over the latin words in his nervousness. The demon laughs. It taunts him, ridicules him. Ben closes out the demon's words.

He's used to ignoring the jibes of others. How many times had he heard others call his mother a whore? How many times had he come home from school with a black eye that he didn't regret?

Words were just words. Some times they hurt, but that didn't make them true. 

Some times they saved lives.

\--

He started with a composition notebook that he picked up at a gas station. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The hunter that had taken out that first vampire nest had a journal - a thick, college-ruled notebook. Ben had managed to glance through it while waiting in the hunter's pickup, and it had seemed to be a treasure trove of information.

Now and then he considers trading up to a leather-bound notebook. Something iconic, that would grow old gracefully. But he just never got around to it.

As time goes on he discovers that the journal has a more practical purpose, beyond record keeping. When a job goes bad he finds solace is the physical reminder of all the lives he has saved.

\--

The Singer Auto Salvage sign welcomes Ben back. It feels like home, far more than the sunny house waiting for him back in suburbia. He feels like he doesn't belong there anymore.

A pair of large, fluffy blue-grey dogs greet him. They bound playfully around his feet, wiggling their butts in place of their missing tails. One had one blue eye - heterochromia, 

"Idjits!" Dean snapped, appearing in the front doorway. He glowers at the dogs, giving Ben only the barest of nods in acknowledgement.

Inside the house Ben sits down on the couch and the dogs swamp him, the blue-eyed one draping himself over his lap in a demand for a tummy rub. Ben finds himself smiling like he hasn't smiled in years.

"They belong to my brother," Dean explains, passing Ben a beer. "He left them here while he's off on vacation with his family. They are nothing but nuisances."

Later on Ben catches Dean absentmindedly rubbing one of the dog's ears while he made phone calls. 

\--

He stays for a few days. He has his excuses - maintenance on the Firebird, research to do, sleep to catch up on. But privately he stays because Dean looks as lonely as he feels. 

When he helps with the cars he feels like he has the father and friend that he never had. Soon enough though Dean is hinting that he should be on the road again.

One night Dean bakes an apple pie. It tastes just like the pies his mother used to make.

\--

The sun beats down bright and hot. Ben drives with his windows down and the volume turned up. The landscape rolls by golden and green, dotted with farm houses and livestock. It's just him and the road, and nothing else matters. 

Until something flickers in the corner of his vision. For a brief moment there is a woman in a hoody and jeans in the seat next to him, her fading brown hair blowing back in the wind. Ben jerks the wheel reflexively, and nearly ends up in the ditch.

On the side of the road he gets out of the car to stretch and wait for the adrenalin rush to fade. Leaning against the side of the Firebird he looks up at the sapphire blue sky and counts the hours of sleep he's gotten.

\--

Eventually he gives in to her nagging and goes to see his aunt.

He sits in her kitchen, and listens to her tell him that everything will be okay, and he listens to his eldest cousin - barely a teenage - prattle on about how unfair her homework is. He smiles and nods to his aunt, and appropriately commiserates with his cousin.

But it all feels hollow. His mind always half on the road, searching for something formless and nameless. He's seen monsters, killed monsters, and made a measurable difference in the world. Compared to that his aunt's homemade mac and cheese seems like a lucid dream that he knows he's going to wake up from.

He goes to the storage unit where his previous life has been bundled up and stowed away. He goes through the boxes of photograph albums, looking at his mother's wide smile as it grew older and older.

\--

Ben stops by to find Dean surrounded by empty bottles, his eyes glazed and lit with an odd light. There is splashes of blood in the demon trap, and a broken chair.

"You're mother would be proud of you," he says, lost in delirium as Ben helps him up the stairs to the sparse bedroom. The older man collapses onto the bed with a sigh that sounds like his mother's name.

Back downstairs Ben sets things to rights, then examines the books on the bookshelves. The full set of the Supernatural series is there, worn and in an odd array of editions - some of them carried worn stickers that announced their status as signed copies. There are leather-bound notebooks, and tomes in ancient languages. 

He pulls out one of the notebooks, and a photo slips from between the covers and drifts to the floor. Ben picked it up. It's a photo of a much younger looking Dean, smiling proudly at the camera and his arm around a younger man that looked enough like him to be his brother. They are standing in front of the Impala. 

The inscription on the back read 'Sam and Dean, 2001.'

Ben opened the journal to replace the photo, and a name jumped out at him from the first page. 'Property of John Winchester.'

\--

Ben stands at the edge of the Grand Canyon, and feels humbled. The great rift in the earth, created over centuries, is as big as he imagine, but there is something different about seeing it in person. Feeling just how grand a canyon needs to be to carry that name.

The sky is turquoise and painted with wispy white clouds. Just in front of him the earth drops away. This is a holy site. He can feel it without knowing it. Below him the Colorado winds her way through the stone, confident and assured of her place in the world. She is muddy red and blue-green, ancient and patient. Her waters hold secrets untold.

He doesn't know how long he is there for, and it takes all the will power he has to turn and start the hike back to the Firebird.

\--

One moment the shapeshifter is knocking the silver knife out of his hand. The next it is back in his hand and the shapeshifter is flying across the office to land face first in a wall of filing cabinets. 

The figure standing in front of Ben turns and his mother smiles at him, the memory of blood streaked across her throat. There is something in her eyes that unsettles Ben. She reaches out to him, then vanishes as the shapeshifter rises to its feet. Ben acts fast, and plunges the silver knife into the shapeshifter's heart. 

\--

Lisa Braedon had been cremated when she died. That was according to her will, and the wishes of her son. Three years after her death Ben burned her favorite necklace. The one that had hung from his rearview mirror from the beginning.

He thinks he feels something cold brush through his hair as he watches the flames envelope the metal and crack the stone. It's the hardest thing he's had to do yet, but he knows it is the right thing.

\--

"I'd tell you to give up hunting, kid, but I don't want to insult you," Dean said, the words slurred by warm whiskey.

"You should come home, get a job," his aunt tells him, a note of desperation and worry in her voice. 

"Why bother?" he hears his uncle growl in the background, "what did you expect him to turn out to be?"

Ben thinks a lot about the future. About getting a job, an apartment, a girlfriend. He thinks about the things that go bump in the night, and the messy end all hunters are destined for.

There's the open road, and the call of a thousand possibilities. Krissy smiles at him from the passenger seat - t-shirt, jeans, and her long hair back in a ponytail - and a little piece of the puzzle in his heart clicks together. Ben decided that all he needed is a fast machine.

**Author's Note:**

> This came about as part of my trying to feel-out what a 'happy' ending for the Winchesters would look like, as seen through the eyes of an outsider. Sam could probably get out of the life, while Dean could easily fall into a 'Bobby' role - a grumpy mechanic that leaves the hunting to younger men, but can't separate from the life. I also like the idea of it being inevitable that Ben falls into being a hunter, considering his life so far. I thought he'd make a good outside perspective, and a new character wouldn't have fit the format I wanted to use.
> 
> I wrote this just 8.10 and well before the 'Men of Letters' story arc started, which presented a completely different path. So I'm considering this slightly more AU than most fanfiction.
> 
> I might add to this later, if the mood strikes me. The title is from "Steve McQueen" by Sheryl Crow.


End file.
